Nokia N900

[storkus at storkus.com]

I'm very surprised no one has brought this device up for discussion yet!
 It would appear to blow away the current Android and OpenMoko devices
by packing a 600 MHz ARM proc, 256MB DRAM, a huge wad of flash, 802.11bg
AND bluetooth, and--biggest of all--quad-band GSM AND a 3G radio
compatible with T-Mobile USA.  It also has USB2 and, curiously (I don't
know exactly what it is) "TV-Out".  On the software side, it runs their
distro called Maemo which, GUI-wise, has Qt at the core, though you can
still run GTK apps like its predecessor the N810.  It's almost entirely
free software and hackable, one of the biggest ones that aren't is
macromedia flash being included (presumably so you can play Youtube
video--I couldn't see playing flash games on an ARM...).

The way I (and a lot of others) see it, this is like the early OLPC's or
eeepc's in terms of horsepower and (somewhat) memory.  More than one
person out there has suggested it could be used as a sort of hand-held
file server.  The geek in me is going even more nuts over buying this
than the Sheevaplug since I could obviously do so much more with it. 
The few reviewers that have gotten their hands on it so far were mostly
morons that obviously couldn't fathom the potential that could be
unlocked from it.  For instance, the keyboard gets griped at a lot.  So?
 Get one of those roll-up USB keyboards from Thinkgeek: since it's a
lightweight distro (Busybox was explicitly mentioned) and (hopefully
full) kernel in there, I would presume that USBHID hasn't been neutered.

So what do you all think?  My current phone (a Motorola V3xx) is still
working ok, and the N900 is nowhere near cheap...but, damn, it's making
me drool!  Should I get it or not?  Are one of you planning on it?

Mike

P.S. Another thing not discussed here: Slackware-13's out. :)